What Makes Sammy Run? (14 page)

“So long, sweetheart,” Sammy said to me. “We’ll be previewing some night next week. I’ll give you a ring when I find out what night and we’ll all get together.”

There he stood in the doorway of his classy apartment, in his early twenties, in his expensive shoes, in his brand-new flashy jacket, in his brand-new Horatio Alger mind, but still looking like a kid off the streets who had sneaked in and put on the clothes he found in the closet. My best friend. My worst enemy shouldn’t have such a best friend.

Back in my room, Billie and I had our moment and then as the passion drained, our bodies returned us to what we really were, casual acquaintances.

The longer the silence lasted the further apart we drew. Finally she said, “What’re you thinking about, honey?”

“Oh, just a lot of things, Billie,” I said. “Nothing much, I guess.”

“You know,” she said, “I like it with you a lot. You’re sweet.”

There was nothing ever sordid about sex with Billie. The way she talked about it, it might have been surfboard riding or mountain climbing, anything she happened to be good at and enjoy.

“Billie,” I said, “don’t answer this unless you want to. How many men have you been with?”

The question wasn’t intended to startle her, but the casualness of her answer startled me.

“Well, when I was fourteen,” she said, “I tried to keep track of all the boys I knew. And when I was fifteen I tried to keep track of all the boys I kissed. And when I was sixteen—but now I’ve even lost track of that.”

She chuckled as if she had told a joke on herself.

“Billie, what do you think of Sammy Glick?”

She pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s a pretty smart feller, all right.”

“You know what I mean,” I said. “How do you feel about him?”

This time she really seemed to think it over. “All I know,” she said slowly, “is that I’d hate to go to bed with him.”

The principal furniture in Billie’s mind was a good-sized bed.

“Why, Billie?”

She hesitated, giggling with the embarrassment of anyone out of the habit of probing ideas. “Oh, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I’ve always liked to do it because it’s just about the most fun you get out of life and because—I bet you laugh at me for this—it’s always seemed like the friendliest thing two people can do in the whole world. That’s why I’ve never wanted to turn pro. But—I know this sounds crazy—but somehow I’ve always felt that if I ever went to bed with
him
—even if he didn’t pay me—I’d feel like I was doing it for money.”

I kept turning that over in my mind as I was falling asleep and
the more I played it back the surer I was that Billie, in her own sweet horizontal way, had said something more searching about Sammy than anything I had been able to hit on yet. And I had been working at it ever since the little copy boy burst into my office and launched his undeclared war against the world.

CHAPTER 5       

   Y
ou could see the beams of the giant searchlights ballyhooing Sammy’s preview plowing broad white furrows through the sky. “There it is,” Sammy said as we turned off Sunset toward the Village. The words came out of his mouth like hard, sharp-sided pebbles. “Jesus.”

He meant those lights up there were spelling Sammy Glick. There was no other word for the sound of pride mouthed with apprehension.

There wasn’t much talking. Sammy’s mood always provided the backdrop for the rest of us, and he was nervous. Even when he tried to cover it with wisecracks, they were nervous wisecracks.

“What kind of a house is this?” he said.

“A tough one,” Kit said. “They only laugh when it’s funny, not when it’s supposed to be funny. And they never cry when it’s maudlin. Only when it’s pathetic.”

“Jesus,” Sammy said.

“And they’re preview-wise,” she warned. “They’ve had so many previews out here that they all sound like little DeMilles. They complain about the angles, and the smoothness of the dissolves, and they even tell you what to cut.”

“The bastards,” Sammy said, “they better think my picture is funny. I know it’s funny. I counted the laughs myself. One hundred and seventeen.”

The theater entrance was full of excitement that came mostly from women who were attracted to the leading man, and men resentful or regretful that they would never go to bed with anybody like the star, and unimportant people who idealized their envy into admiration and kids who wanted to have more autographs than anybody else in the world.

All the lights were on in the theater and everybody in the audience had his head turned toward the entrance. It looked crazy, as if the screen had suddenly been set up behind their backs. They were all watching for the celebrities to fill up the loge section that had been roped off for them. I realized why Sammy had rushed us through dinner. He wanted to be sure and get there before the lights went out.

The three of us started down the aisle together but we had only gone a couple of rows when we lost Sammy. When I looked around, Sammy was practically in the lap of a dignified, gray-haired man, with a pink, gentle face, which was a little too soft around the mouth.

“That’s his producer,” Kit said as I was about to ask. “Sidney Fineman.” I looked again. Fineman was one of the magic names like Goldwyn and Mayer.

As we waited for the lights to fade, we talked about Fineman. He was one of the few real old-timers still on top. He had written scenarios for people who have become myths or names of streets
like Griffith and Ince. He was supposed to have one of the finest collections of rare books in the country.

“And it isn’t just conspicuous consumption,” she said. “His idea of how to spend one hell of an evening is to lock himself in his library alone. He built a special house for his books at the back of his estate.”

The more she told me the more curious I was that a man like Sidney Fineman should want to work with Sammy.

“Fineman isn’t the man he was fifteen years ago,” she said. “He had just as much taste as Thalberg and more guts. Hollywood was his girl. He loved her all the time. He had ideas for making something out of her …”

I could see Sammy out of the corner of my eye. He had finally worked his way down to our aisle. He was leaning over two or three people to shake hands with Junior Laemmele.

“But that’s all gone,” Kit was saying. “The Depression killed something in him. Not only losing his own dough, but the big bank boys like Chase and Atlas moving in on his company. He began to get an obsession about the Wall Street bunch working behind his back. He started playing safe. Now he’s just one of the top dozen around town, making his old hits over and over again because he’s scared to death that the minute he starts losing money they’ll take his name off the door. He’s convinced Sammy is a money writer. And I have a sneaking suspicion who convinced him.”

Sammy ducked into the seat beside me as the credit titles came on. I watched his face as his name filled the screen:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
by
SAMUEL GLICK

There is no word in English to describe it. You could say gloat, smile, leer, grin, smirk, but it was all of those and something more, a look of deep sensual pleasure. The expression held me fascinated because I felt it was something I should not be allowed to see, like
the face of the boy who roomed across the hall from me in prep school when I had made the sordid mistake of entering without knocking.

Then Sammy leaned over and whispered something in my ear that will always seem more perverse than anything in Krafft-Ebing.

“Just for a gag,” he said, “clap for me.”

The most perverse part of the story is that I did. There were my hands clapping foolishly like seal flippers. The applause was taken up and spread through the house, not what you would call a thunderous ovation, just enough of a sprinkle to make my hands feel like blushing. It wasn’t bad enough that I had become Sammy’s drinking companion. I had to be his one-man claque. My applause couldn’t have been more automatic if Sammy had previously hypnotized me and led me into the theater.

As I stared at that credit title I had a feeling that something was missing. But it wasn’t until the screen was telling us who designed the wardrobe and assisted the director that I remembered what it was. Julian. Julian Blumberg, the kid who made the little snowball that Sammy was rolling down the Alps. Granting that Sammy had written, God knows how, the screenplay alone, the worst it should have been was original story by Samuel Glick and Julian Blumberg preceding the screenplay credit. But there it was, all Sammy Glick, no Julian Blumberg.

On impulse, but a better one than before, I leaned over and asked Sammy whether he noticed anything funny about that screen credit and when he didn’t, I enlightened him. It was like lighting a candle in Mammoth Cave.

“That first story we did all went in the ashcan, Al,” he said in a thick whisper. “I had to start from scratch. I know it’s a tough break for the kid, but that’s Hollywood.”

“The hell it is,” I said. “That’s Sammy Glick.”

Kit said a sharp
shhhhh
.

As the picture was opening I was wondering whether I would have agreed with Sammy about Hollywood before I met her.

The picture wasn’t anything that would come back to you as
you were climbing into bed, or even remember as you were reaching under the seat for your hat; it was a good example of the comedy-romance formula that Hollywood has down cold, with emphasis not on content but on the facility with which it is told. It was right in the groove that Hollywood has been geared for, slick, swift and clever. What Kit calls the Golden Rut.

But in spite of the entertainment on the screen I preferred the show going on in the adjoining seat. I never saw a man work so hard at seeing a picture. “Eleven already,” he said to me a couple of minutes after the picture started, and I realized he had a clocker in his hand and was counting the laughs. And each time they laughed he jotted down feverishly the line or the bit of business. And every time they didn’t he’d mumble, “It’s that goddam ham—he’s murdering my line,” or “That’s a dead spot they can kill when they trim it.”

I just sat there watching him learn the motion-picture business. He was an apt student, all right. He learned something about pictures in five months that I’m just beginning to understand after five years. Hollywood always has its bumper crop of phonies but believe it or not Sammy was one of the less obvious ones. He was smart enough to know that the crook who cracks his jobs too consistently is sure to be caught. His secret was to be just as conscientious about the real work he did as about the filching and finagling.

The picture got a good hand as the lights came on again. I turned to follow Sammy up the aisle but Kit grabbed my arm.

“Out this way,” she said. “It’s better.”

She indicated the emergency exit on the side. It led us to an alley that ran around the theater. As we walked through the darkness toward the street, Kit said:

“I always like to duck out before anybody asks me how I liked the picture.”

“Even if you did?”

“It isn’t that simple. Hollywood has a regular ritual for preview reactions. When they know they’ve got a turkey they want to be
reassured. And when they have one that’s okay they expect superlatives.”

She illustrated her point by telling the old Hollywood story about the three yes-men who are asked what they think of the preview. The first says it is without a doubt the greatest picture ever made. The second says it is absolutely colossal and stupendous. The third one is fired for shaking his head and saying, “I don’t know, I only think it’s great.”

“Just the same,” I said, “I’m impressed. To tell the truth I didn’t know Sammy had it in him.”

“Don’t misunderstand,” she said. “I think it’s a damn good movie. The only thing I have against those guys is that they’re like the old Roman Caesars—every piddling little success becomes an excuse for staging a triumph. And I just don’t happen to enjoy being dragged along behind the chariot.”